Comparing explicit vs. incidental teaching when acquiring new vocabulary in EFL

Abstract

This study compares the acquisition of new vocabulary in EFL through reading. Two different conditions will be compared: explicit vocabulary teaching and incidental vocabulary teaching. Practicum II was the ideal opportunity to carry out the study because the researcher was given the chance to work with 1st of ESO groups and the students of these groups were taken as the subjects of the research. Students in both groups were given the same texts, but only group B had the opportunity of asking anything related to the vocabulary of the text. Just after the reading, the researcher took all the text copies back and the students were asked to complete two different tests, one at a time. The first test consisted on asking them the translation of 20 English words linked to the topic (meaning recall). The second test presented the same 20 words, but this time students had to match them to their corresponding definitions (meaning recognition). A week later, the same two tests were passed again in both groups in order to check the vocabulary they had learnt. The results show that explicit learning may be more effective than incidental learning when acquiring vocabulary in EFL.